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eath within mine eyes! Methought I saw a thousand fearful wracks; a thousand men that fishes gnawed upon; wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, all scattered in the bottom of the sea. Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept as it were in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems that woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep, and mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by."
He pulled his mind away from those morbid and somewhat flowery words, and found them migrating toward the play that they came from. Sudden anger surged up within him - or, at least, he thought it was anger. It might have been the last fragments of his breakfast. Not only had that zooterkin Christopher Marlowe stolen some of his themes for Edward II, but that coney-catching mountebank Francis Pearson had produced his own inferior copy and called it The True Tragedie of Richard the Third. Marlowe was dead, thank the Lord, and Pearson was a talentless hack who would never amount to anything, but there was no saying what was happening in London with Shakespeare gone. He could return to find his entire body of work being performed under other titles by inferior actors, with some upstart writer getting all the credit. Worse still, Macbeth was in rehearsal, ready to be performed before the King at Hampton Court Palace. What travesties might Richard Burbage and the rest of the King's Men commit upon it in his absence?
Perhaps he should think about returning to Stratford, his family and his grain-dealing business. Writing was a fool's game. Long hours, low pay and little praise.
Just like spying, really. "All right, Mr Hall?" Shakespeare almost didn't acknowledge the sailor walking past, but at the last moment he remembered his false identity - the one that Walsingham had persuaded him to take on for this mission. "Feeling a little unsteady," he replied.
"Get some victuals down your neck," the sailor shouted back over his shoulder.
"T
